1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automated electronic design of devices, such as integrated circuits, integrated circuit packages, printed circuit boards, electrical connectors, aircrafts, automobiles, antennas, etc. and, more particularly, to automated electronic design of such devices utilizing a “cloud” computing network in a manner that maintains security of the device design.
2. Description of Related Art
The use of a “cloud” network, such as Amazon's EC2 or Microsoft's Azure for electronic design automation provides certain benefits, in conjunction with appropriate scalable algorithms, such as, without limitation, (i) scalability, i.e., availability of large amount of memory and a large number of computing resources and (ii) peak usage management, i.e., the computing resources can adapt to the needs of customers in terms of problem size. These benefits make the cloud network a favorable hardware platform on which to run electronic design automation (EDA) software.
However, there is one critical concern, namely, that of data security and intellectual property (IP) protection. In one example of this, companies that design integrated circuits are concerned that since the software is running on a computing cloud outside their company firewall, that sending critical IP is dangerous. Within EDA, critical IP includes layout (distribution of metal on chip in each layer) and stackup or technology information (the vertical distribution of metals and dielectrics materials and thicknesses) for chips, packages, boards, and systems.
One approach to reduce this problem is to encrypt the data going from such company's computer to the cloud. However, this approach has the following issues: (a) encryption can be costly and cause latency; (b) the encryption may be breakable; and (c) if the data has to be decrypted once on the cloud prior to EDA computation, then there is a concern that the cloud node may be accessed by an undesired third party thus compromising the IP.